Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter bottom and sides of an 8-inch cake pan. Line bottom with parchment paper or wax paper. If wax paper, butter it also. Melt chocolate in double boiler over hot, not boiling, water.

Cream the butter and sugar in electric mixer. Add eggs, one at a time. Mix in well, scraping down sides with spatula as needed. Add almonds, mix, then bread crumbs. Add chocolate. Mix well, add orange zest. Pour into cake pan and bake 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool in pan placed on a rack for 30 minutes. Turn out into dish, remove paper and cool completely.

Glaze For French Chocolate Cake:

Melt chocolate and butter in top of double boiler, stirring regularly. Add honey and stir well. Remove from heat. Beat with wire whisk for 5 minutes to help cooling process and assure smoothness. When the glaze mixture has cooled but is still tepid. Pour over thoroughly cooled cake.

This is a very rich cake and densely chocolate. A small piece is a completely adequate serving.

Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk until smooth.

Place unsweetened chocolate in a small bowl. Pour the boiling water over the chocolate, and stir until melted. Mix chocolate, vanilla, and lemon juice into the buttermilk batter. Divide batter evenly into the prepared cake pans. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Remove saucepan from heat, and set in a large bowl filled with ice water.

Beat filling with an electric mixer until spreadable. At first this seems to be just hot, hard work, but the filling will suddenly start to thicken as it begins to cool. Transfer filling to a clean bowl, and it will continue to cool as you frost the top of each cake layer. Stack the frosted layers atop each other.

lazy town – cooking bookThis icing/frosting is rich and yummy and is better served at room temperature. Once chilled it becomes hard and fudge like. It is a great base for black icing for decorating, the strong fudge flavor over powers the black paste coloring.

Ingredients

Instructions

Mix margarine and 1/2 cup shortening until blended. Slowly add 4 cups powdered sugar, vanilla and 2 tbls of milk until creamy, set aside. Melt chips with 1 tbs shortening, mix until syrup like. This can be done in microwave…do not over heat. Poor chocolate into icing and mix well slowly adding additional cup of sugar alternting with 1-2 tbs of milk. Mix until creamy. Add black color paste if desired. Spread onto your favorite cake. Makes about 4 cups of icing. Can be stored in refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Allow icing to sit until room temperature, then mix before spreading on cake. After that, WALA! Enjoy!!

This Halloween cake was made of chocolate and chocolate icing. Most of the decors I made them out of gum paste, the bones I just piped them out of butter-cream icing, and the dirt was made out of crushed oreos.

I am very happy of the way this cake turned out! Besides looking great, it tasted awesome! :silly: